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Ant and Wushu girls minus Linda

To celebrate Anthony’s 27th birthday yesterday, we went to the California Academy of Sciences Nightlife event in SF’s Golden Gate Park, catered to a 21+ crowd. Perusing science/animal/environment exhibits with a couple of beers and cocktails in hand is a pretty good combination of “hip” and nerdy, which is exactly how I would describe Anthony, albeit much more of the latter than the former. Now, I had visited the Academy when it first opened last year and spent a Saturday afternoon avoiding kids and tripping over strollers; yesterday, I spent the evening avoiding A-Z-N ricer boys and tripping over drunk wannabe-hipsters. I can’t tell which one is worse.

It’s pretty difficult to see any of the exhibits while navigating your way through so many people; at least with kids you can just punt them out of the way (just half-kidding; chill out). Additionally, mingling with new people isn’t really an option because it’s such a large venue and not designed to facilitate that sort of interaction. So, it’s probably the worst of both worlds, whether you’re trying to meet new people in a bar/club-like setting or trying to see the all the exhibitis. Luckily, I wasn’t trying to do either, so I had a really good time with old friends in an awesome venue.

Aquarium + Bar???

Sorry Mom and Dad--I was kind of an ugly kid!

When I was younger (and still today), my mom always teased that all my birthday gifts should go to her as gratitude for bringing me into this world. (For the record, I didn’t ask for it!) But thanks anyway, Mom and Dad. I turned 3 years old in the picture to the left, which was taken in the house in which I currently reside. (That’s right, I moved back in two decades later!)

Thanks for all the calls, texts, tweets, IMs, and, of course, Facebook wall posts! And since we all know that the number of Facebook birthday messages received is a direct one-to-one positive correlation to your popularity factor, I can now claim that I am approximately 5% more popular this year than I was when I turned 23. w00t! (But that’s not saying much.)

No, really, thanks everyone! :) I’m officially in my mid-twenties now, and next year, I’ll have to start rounding up to 30-years-old!

My roommate and long-time friend Nancy turned 24 on Monday, and we had celebrated over the weekend Friday with her coworkers and a few of good friends that we grew up with. Check out the two pictures below—that’s me, Nancy, and Judy in 1993 and now (plus Jean!) in 2009, 16 years later!

The interesting thing is that prior to Summer ‘08 when we moved in together, I hadn’t seen Nancy for about 10 years since I moved away from San Ramon and stopped attending the church that we grew up with. Coincidentally, we both ended up working in this area after college, and she needed a place to stay and found via Facebook that I too was looking for a roommate.  As a product of living with Nancy, I’ve been getting back in touch with several others that she had kept in close contact with. Interestingly enough, even though I had been MIA for so many years, I found that we’re all still able to mesh well and that our childhood ties run deeper than one might expect from a bunch of kids that watched The Brave Little Toaster about 20 times over and slid down the stairs on a red mini-sofa while their parents communed and prayed together. 

Yesterday, the four of us that work in South Bay decided to cook together and prepared meal of zarusoba, baked salmon, pesto pizza, nian gao (or “Rice Ovaletts” according to the packaging), salad, chocolate pie, and frozen yogurt.  Eclectic yet delicious!

Our next potluck is supposed to be a curry cook-off, so stay tuned for that one; I intend to win this one as I’ve been getting in some good practice lately!

We spent the rest of the evening checking out a dance floor that Wei installed in his room; Wei and I tried to teach Josh and Nancy how to Lindy Hop, and they tried to teach us how to pop lock and drop it. I think I’ll stick with ballroom…

Anyway, I’m looking forward to some good times on our cruise next weekend! We’re no longer going to Ensenada due to the Swine Flu but circling the Pacific Ocean to land at Catalina Island instead, which is definitely a-OK with me!

Make a wish!

Yes, there were 26 candles, and we very well could have set off the fire alarm and sent the whole restaurant in a frenzy. Now THAT would have made a good blog post.

(No such luck.)

We celebrated Jean’s 21st (+5) birthday yesterday at Amarin Thai, with some very nice waiters that catered to our group of 13 on a busy Tuesday night. Gifting a pyromaniac a large box of matches and a new Zippo and then telling her light her own candles is probably a bad idea…